This is the joint website of Women Against Rape and Black Women's Rape Action Project. Both organisations are based on self-help and provide support, legal information and advocacy. We campaign for justice and protection for all women and girls, including asylum seekers, who have suffered sexual, domestic and/or racist violence.

WAR was founded in 1976. It has won changes in the law, such as making rape in marriage a crime, set legal precedents and achieved compensation for many women. BWRAP was founded in 1991. It focuses on getting justice for women of colour, bringing out the particular discrimination they face. It has prevented the deportation of many rape survivors. Both organisations are multiracial.

Seven men will be sentenced for 43 offences – ranging from rape and conspiracy to rape to supplying Class A drugs to using an instrument to procure a miscarriage – against six underage girls. But what about the police officers and social workers whose refusal to act enabled these rapes? Will they be prosecuted for aiding and abetting rape? Were they involved in other ways? Is that why they didn’t act against rape? Or is it their bias against working class children and against rape victims generally?

Martin Narey has called for an inquiry into the "over-representation by Asian men in child exploitation" (Grooming offences committed mostly by Asian men, says ex-Barnardo's chief, 9 May). What does he know about child exploitation? As former director general of the prison service and assistant governor of Deerbolt prison, Narey failed to apologise for the widespread rape and beating of children when it was brought into the open on his watch (How did Neville Husband get away with the horrific abuse of teenagers in his care?, Weekend, 14 April). Narey's racist spotlight on Asian men conveniently obscures the action and inaction of police, CPS and social workers who allowed the rape of more than 40 children over years. Why didn't they stop it?

RELEASES: THIRTEEN FORMER HUNGER STRIKERS HAVE NOW BEEN RELEASED of the 25 or so we were in touch with on a daily basis.
All had spent months in detention and one woman had been there for a year and a half. Some had WON THEIR CASE but were being kept inside by a vindictive Home Office which was appealing the judgement. Women described feeling like forgotten people. One of the key demands of the hunger strike was for an end to indefinite detention.

Start and End Dates

STOP RAPE, DETENTION AND DEPORTATIONS

On 8 June, a charge of attempted rape brought by Ms Joy N against chief of police inspector Vittorio Addesso of Milan CIE (Centre for Identification and Expulsion) Detention Centre in Italy, will be heard in court. People will be protesting outside the court

In August 2009, Mr Addesso tried to rape Ms Joy N, a young Nigerian woman, while she slept in the detention centre he runs. Her cellmate and three other women intervened and stopped the rape.

The director of the detention centre Massimo Chiodini, from the Red Cross (which runs many detention centres throughout Italy), witnessed the attempted rape but later in court denied seeing anything.

The Guardian article below came about as a result of Legal Action for Women’s National Gathering on Saturday 3 July 2004. Kamwaura Nygothi was one of a number of women who raised the racism they were suffering in the North East of England. As a result of the article we have received many sympathetic responses, including several from Middlesborough. People said how shocked and disgusted they are at the racism and some offered practical support and help with housing, food and donations. Some of the letters and articles can be seen below.

Every moment for me is fear
As an asylum seeker, I discovered what racism really means when I was 'dispersed' to Middlesbrough
Kamwaura Nygothi, The Guardian, Comment, Thursday July 8, 2004

I am an asylum seeker and I am black. I believe that in Middlesbrough, where the Home Office has placed me, I am not safe.